“We’ll see,” said Stanley, who was of a hopeful colour.
“All you can say of Liberals,” said Maurice, who was not, “is that they’re possibly (not certainly) one better than Conservatives. However, I’m not crabbing them. They’ve got their chance, and let’s hope they take it. First they’ve got to undo all the follies the last government perpetrated. Every government ought to begin with that, always. Then they’ve got to concentrate on Home Rule. As you say, we shall see.”
“Anyhow,” said Stanley, “we’ve got our chance. . . . And there’s the
Tribune
. Penny Liberalism at last.”
“I give it a year,” said Maurice. “If it takes longer dying, Thomasson is an even more stubborn lunatic than I think him. They’ve started all right; quite a good first number, only how any Liberal paper can publish a polite message from that damned Tsar beats me. I believe my paper is really the only one that insults the Russian government as it ought to be insulted. All the others either make up to the Tsar for his armies or butter him up because the Hague Conference and his silly prattle about a world peace. It makes one sick. Liberals are as bad as the rest.”
It was edifying, during the election days, to learn from various authorities the reasons for the Liberal victory. The
Times
said it was the effect, long delayed, of the suffrage reform bills; the working classes, at last articulate, had determined to dictate their own policy; no triumph for Liberalism, no humiliation for Conservatism, but an experiment on the part of Labour. The
Morning Post
said the victory was due to the misrepresentation of Chinese labour by Liberals, false promises, and the inevitable swing of the pendulum. The
Daily Mail
said it was the swing of the pendulum, Chinese labour, the over continuance in office of the last government, the Education Act, taxation, unfair food tax cries, and a liking for antiquated methods of
commerce. The
Daily News
said it was a rebellion against reaction, protection, and the Little Loaf. The
Tribune
said it was a rebellion also against poverty, the direction of companies by ministers, and the undoing of the great Victorian reforms; it was, in fact, the protest of Right against Force, of the common good against class interest, of the ideal element in political life against merely mechanical efficiency. (“Mechanical efficiency! “Maurice jeered.” Much there was of that in the last government. As to the ideal element, the Liberal ideal is a large loaf and low taxes. Quite a sound one, but nothing to be smug about.”) However, the whole press was smug, as always, and so were nearly all statesmen in public speeches; their cynicism they kept for private life. Mr. Asquith, for instance, said that this uprising of the people was due to moral reprobation of the double dealing of the late government; plain dealing was what the nation wanted. And Mr. Lloyd George, in his best vein, spoke of a fearful reckoning. A tornado, he called it, of righteous indignation with the trifling that had been going on in high places for years with all that was sacred to the national heart. The oppression of Nonconformists at home, the staining of the British flag abroad with slavery, the riveting of the chains of the drink traffic on the people of this country—against all these had the people risen in wrath. It was a warning to ministers not to trifle with conscience, or to menace liberty in a free land. The people meant to save themselves; the dykes had been opened, and reaction in all its forms would be swept away by the deluge.
Mr. Balfour, less excited and more philosophic, observed, at his own defeat at Manchester, that, after all, the Tories had been in office ten years, and would doubtless before long be in office again, and that these oscillations of fortune would and did always occur.
He was probably nearer the truth about the elections than most of those who pronounced upon them. It is a safe assertion that no government is popular for long; get rid of it and let’s try another, for anyhow another can’t be sillier, is the voter’s very natural and proper feeling. The sophisticated voter knows that it will almost certainly be as silly, but, after all, it seems only fair to let each side have its innings.
Anyhow, and whatever the reasons that brought Liberalism into power, there it was. It was expressed by a House which was at present, and before its enthusiasms were whittled away in action, composed largely of political and social theorists, men new to politics and brimming with plans. Mr. H. W. Massingham said it was the ablest parliament he had ever known, but not the most distinguished.
Imogen saved up her pocket money for the cheap excursion fare to Portsmouth, and slipped off there alone, on a raw February morning, by the special early train, to see the King launch the
Dreadnought
. The
Dreadnought
was a tremendous naval event. She displaced 19,900 tons, beating the
Dominion
and the
King Edward VII
. by 1200 tons, and she would make 21 knots to their 16.5, and had turbine engines, and carried ten 12-inch guns, and her outline was smooth and lovely and unbroken by casemates, for she was built for speed. Imogen had to go. She slipped off without a word at home, for she had a cough and objections would have been raised. She stood wedged for hours in a crowd on the docks in cold rain that pitted
the heaving, green harbour sea, and coughed. She did not command a view of the actual launching, but would see the splendid creature as she left the slip and took the water. Before that there was a service, the service appointed to be used at the launching of the ships of His Majesty’s Navy.
“They that go down to the sea in ships, and occupy their business in great waters. These men see the works of the Lord: and His wonders in the deep. For at His word the stormy wind ariseth: which lifteth up the waves thereof. They are carried up to the heaven, and down again to the deep: their soul melteth away because of the trouble. They reel to and fro and stagger like a drunken man: and are at their wit’s end. . . .”
After this, Hymn 592 (A. & M.) was irritating and silly, but hymns cannot be helped, bishops will have them.
Then the King smashed the bottle of wine on her and, christened, she took the water. She left the slip and came into the view of the crowd, and a great shout went up, “She’s moving!”
Imogen, thrilled, gazed at the lovely, the amazing creature, the giant of the navy. What a battleship! With professional interest Imogen examined her points through her father’s field glasses. No openings in the bulkheads—it was that which gave her her smooth, fleet look. She was made for a running fight. She was glorious.
Imogen travelled home, wet through, shivering, her cough tearing at her chest, and went to bed for a month with bronchitis. So much for the navy, said Vicky, crossly. But the amazing gray ship was a comfort to Imogen through her fevered, waking dreams.
Imogen, bow and arrows in hand, crawled through the wood, beneath overhanging boughs of oaks and elders and beeches and the deep green arms of pines, that shut the little copse from the July sun into a fragrant gloom. Every now and then she stopped, listened, and laid her ear to the mossy ground.
“Three miles off and making a beeline south,” she observed, frowning. “My God.”
“Michael crawled on,” she continued, crawling, “keeping his head low, so as not to afford a target for any stray arrow. Who knew what sinister shadows lurked in the forest, to right and to left? . . . Hist! What was that sound? Something cracked in the tangle of scrub near him. . . . A Cherokee on a lone trail, possibly. . . . A Cherokee: the most deadly of the Red Tribes. . . . Cold sweat stood out on Michael’s brow. Could he reach the camp in time? Again he laid his ear to the ground and listened. They were only two miles now, and still that swift, terrible travelling. . . . The sun beat upon his head and neck; he felt dizzy and sick. Suppose he fainted before he reached his goal. . . . That damned cracking in the bushes again. . . . Good God! . . . Out of the thicket sprang a huge Redskin, uttering the horrid war-whoop of the Cherokees, which, once heard, is never forgotten. Michael leaped to his feet, pulled his bow-string to his ear, let fly. . . .”
Imogen, too, let fly.
“Missed him,” she muttered, and swarmed nimbly up the gnarled trunk of an oak until she reached the
lower boughs, from whence she looked down into a fierce red face, eagle-nosed, feather-crowned.
“Oh, Big Buffalo,” she softly called, “Will you parley?”
Big Buffalo grunted, and they parleyed. If Michael would betray the whereabouts of his friends, Big Buffalo would grant him his life. If not, no such easy death as the arrow awaited him, “for we Cherokees well understand the art of killing. . . .” Michael, sick with fear, betrayed his friends, and Big Buffalo left him, primed with information. (In common with other heroes of fiction, Michael never thought of giving incorrect or misleading information.)
“Michael lay in the forest, his head upon his arms. What had he done? There was no undoing it now. Why didn’t I choose the stake? Oh, damn, why didn’t I? . . .”
It was too warm, sweet and drowsy for prolonged remorse. Michael forgot his shame. The breeze in the pine trees sang like low harps. . . . The shadowy copse was soaked in piney sweetness, golden and dim. Michael, with his bow, his Redskins, and his broken honour, faded out in the loveliness of the hour.
Ecstasy descended on the wood; enchantment held it, saturating it with golden magic. Ants and little wood-beetles scuttled over Imogen’s outstretched hands and bare, rough head. Rabbits bobbed and darted close to her. She was part of the woods, caught breathless into that fairy circle like a stolen, enchanted child.
“I am full of the Holy Ghost,” said Imogen. “This is the Holy Ghost”. . . and loveliness shook her, as a wind shakes a leaf. These strange, dizzy moments lurked hidden in the world like fairies in a wood, and at any hour they sprang forth and seized her, and the emotion, however often repeated, was each time as
keen. They would spring forth and grip her, turning the dædal earth to magic, at any lovely hour, in wood or lane or street, or among the wavering candles and the bread and wine. She was stabbed through and through with beauty sweet as honey and sharp as a sword, and it was as if her heart must break in her at its turning. After this brief intensity of joy or pain, whichever it was, it was as if something in her actually did break, scattering loose a drift of pent-up words. That was how poems came. After the anguished joy, the breaking loose of the words, then the careful stringing of them together on a chain, the fastidious, conscious arranging. Then the setting them down, and reading them over, and the happy, dizzy (however erroneous) belief that they were good. . . . That was how poems came, and that was life at its sharpest, its highest intensity. Afterwards, one sent them to papers, and it was pleasant and gratifying if other people saw them and liked them too. But all that was a side-issue. Vanity is pleasant, gratified ambition is pleasant, earning money is very pleasant, but these are not life at its highest power. You might at once burn every poem you wrote, but you would still have known life.
The song the pines hummed became words, half formed, drifting, sweet. . . . Imogen listened, agape, like an imbecile. It was a lovely, jolly, woody thing that was being sung to her . . . she murmured it over. . . .
A bell rang, far away. Sharply time’s voice shivered eternity to fragments. Imogen yawned, got up, brushed pine needles out of her hair and clothes, took up her bow, and strolled out of fairyland. It was tea-time at the farm.
As she sauntered through the little wood, she shot arrows at the trees and stopped to retrieve them.
Then she found a long, sharp stick, pointed, like a spear, and became a knight in a Norman forest. She encountered another knight, a hated foe. There was a fight à
outrance
. They fenced, parried, lunged. . . .
“Swerve to the right, son Roger, he said,
When you catch his eye through the helmet’s slit;
Swerve to the right, then out at his head,
And the Lord God give you joy of it. . . .”
A swinging thrust. . . .
“Got him, pardie!”
“Hullo.”
Imogen faced about, and there, on the cart track between the wood and the home field, stood her uncle Ted, large and red, in breeches and gaiters, his pipe between his teeth.
“Oh, hallo, uncle Ted.”
Imogen had turned red. She had been seen making an ass of herself alone in the wood. Behaving like a maniac. Damn.
“Anything the matter? Got the staggers, have you?” said uncle Ted, as if she were a cow.
“No, I’m all right. Looking for arrows and things, that’s all.”
“Oh, I see. . . . Comin’ up to tea?”
They walked across the home field together. Imogen was sulky and ashamed. She was emptied of enchantment and the Holy Ghost, and was nothing but an abrupt, slangy, laconic girl, going sullenly into tea, feeling an ass. Uncle Ted was thinking farmer’s thoughts, of crops and the like, not of Imogen.
But afterwards he said to Una, “Not quite all there, eh, that girl of Vicky’s? Flings herself about in the wood when she’s alone, like some one not right, and talks to herself, too. Eighteen, is she? It’d be
right enough if she was twelve. But at eighteen or nineteen. . . .”
“Oh, Imogen’s all right. She’s childish for her age, that’s all.” Una took every one for granted.
“Childish, yes. That’s what I say. They ought to have her seen to. Gabbles, too. I can’t make out half she’s saying. . . . Katie may do her good, I dare say. Katie’s got sense. . . . It’s against a girl, going on like that. No sensible young fellow would like it. They ought to have her seen to. What?”
“Oh, she’s all right,” said Una again. “There she is in the field playing rounders with the others quite sensibly, you see.”
“I dare say. She may be all right at games, but she oughtn’t to be let loose alone in woods. She’ll get herself talked about. . . .”